


None Shall Sleep

by ms_qualia



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: AU, Enemies to Lovers, F/M, Force Bond (Star Wars), Forced Marriage, Gender swapped Turandot AU? Gender swapped Turandot AU., Minor Character Death, Reylo - Freeform, Supreme Leader Kylo Ren
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-12
Updated: 2018-11-12
Packaged: 2019-08-22 21:54:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,413
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16606142
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ms_qualia/pseuds/ms_qualia
Summary: AU. After the First Order conquers the galaxy, Rey unwillingly travels with Finn to Naboo to help establish a puppet Senate. But after witnessing a bloody execution on Naboo, she is outraged. She challenges Supreme Leader Kylo Ren to combat for control of the Galaxy. When she wins and spares his life, she finds a nasty prize: she’s required to either marry or kill him before dawn or surrender the throne and die. Neither of them want the marriage, so they make a deadly wager: if he can discover her name before dawn, he gets back the throne and can dispose of her as he pleases. If he can't, she can do likewise.Rey is certain she can hold out until dawn, even as he sends every sentient being on the planet after her. But Finn is there, too— can she win the game and keep him safe?





	None Shall Sleep

**Author's Note:**

> Hi. It's been a while. I have been up to things. ;)
> 
> I got bitten by this plot bunny and thought I'd write it. Review, lemme know what you've been up to, whatever.

Just on the horizon, obsidian black against the deep blue sky, rose a jagged unfinished tower.  It dwarfed the ruins of the green-domed Theed Royal Palace below it, as tall as the cliffs it stood upon and the green forests below, which Rey and Finn’s ship now skimmed across on its way to their destination. The black tower was unnatural. It was like someone had slashed a hole in the sky.

Rey’s hair stood on end.

In the co-pilot’s seat, Finn blew out a trembling breath. “We could just... not go. Just land somewhere. Try and make it in the wilderness.”

No. They couldn’t.

The First Order had swept across the Galaxy in less than three years. Finn had shown up on Jakku just a few days before the Hosnian system was wiped out. Two weeks later the Resistance was gone. Rey had her suspicions about Finn at first. He hardly knew anything about anything, and the Finalizer had been in the system. But she’d taken pity on him. Couldn’t let him starve to death, could she? So she showed him how to scavenge. It’s usually a solitary job, but they worked well together.

Six months back, the First Order demanded Senators from every populated system or get wiped out. Well, Jakku didn’t have a government (it was a resolute corporatist anarchy), and the other planets in the systems were lifeless rocks. The First Order didn’t care. So, they had a planet-wide lottery. Rey had good luck at gambling, had a good feel for dice and used that intuition to draw. It backfired. She “won.” The prize was a tracking chip implanted at the base of her neck and a transport with exactly enough fuel to get to Naboo to go help them set up a puppet Senate. It’d be her job to vote “yay” at blaster point to give this whole thing a veneer of legitimacy.

What a farce.

She’d do it and get back home as soon as possible. Some oily junkyard king would want to play puppet once it was clear it was a safe and comfortable position. But that had yet to be demonstrated. That was worrying, but to be honest, it might be a good thing. Jakku itself was dangerous, and Senator was a prominent position. Her parents, if they were out there, might see her on a news feed and recognize her. She was older, but she still wore her hair the same. So perhaps she didn’t resist it as strongly as she might have. There was trepidation, yes, but also a little sliver of hope. 

Finn was more scared than she was. When he couldn’t figure a way to get her out of it, he insisted on going with her.

The craft shuddered as the landing skids touched down. Finn wiped the sweat from his forehead with trembling fingers.

“Hey, relax. You’re making me nervous.” She smiled to reassure him. It was beginning to grate a little. She was the one with the device in her neck. Not him. “Hey, maybe they’ll finally tell us what this emissary thing’s about. You think?” 

They didn’t know if they’d be sleeping on the ship that night or… elsewhere. So they’d rolled some essentials up in light sleeping bags with straps attached, called tucker bags colloquially on Jakku. They were handy if you needed to go scavenging but might get pinned inside a downed battlecruiser during a sandstorm. She and Finn had spent a few nights like that, just talking. Nothing about the past, no future. Just making up stories in the dim firelight while the wind howled.

Rey and Finn took a breath by the door. Finn’s hand hovered over the panel. He drew the blaster he’d bought. He’d bought that for portions. They’d bickered about it, but he said he was there to keep her safe. _Trust me. Just let me do this._  

“Ready?” he asked.

She had a really bad feeling, but she did trust him. She took a deep breath and nodded.

The hydraulics hissed. Down went the door and— 

Behind it, stormtroopers, their blasters trained on them.

“Put the weapon down!” one of them bellowed, his voice filtered through the mask.

Up went Rey and Finn’s hands. Finn and then Rey got yanked down the plank, slammed face-down on the tarmac, and searched. Their tucker bags got pulled off of them. Rey winced as hands ran up and down her legs, searching for weapons.

“This is some welcome for a Senator!” said Finn.

“Senators don’t come weapons drawn. The Supreme Leader will decide what to do with you. On your feet.”

And so they were cuffed and frog-marched from the full landing pad, down the street, toward the looming palace and the massive crowd at the base of it. Rey’s knee throbbed. A little trickle of blood ran from Finn’s nose down to his chin.

“Waste of portions,” she muttered at him. 

“Yeah, yeah.”

He looked gray with fear. She supposed now was not the time to bicker. “You all right?”

His mouth firmed up. “You need to take this seriously. You have no idea who these people are. What they can do.”

She scoffed. She heard they found and killed Luke Skywalker himself. Hope himself. They paraded his body through the capitals of dozens of planets. What else was there to know?

A stormtrooper took Rey by the scruff of the neck (still sore from the chip implantation) and led her to the front of the crowd, elbowing humans, Twi’leks, and a few very tall amphibious-looking aliens Rey recognized from off-Jakku travelers’ descriptions as Gungans. On the top of the massive black steps a redheaded man was being dragged, struggling, up the steps to the center of a stage-like dais Behind him were a pair of giant doors, and between them was a copper gong the height of three men. 

The redheaded man was forced to kneel in front of a metal cube in the very center of the dais. His cuffs, precisely like the ones Rey and Finn were wearing, were magnetized the cube. His face was a picture of anguish as a black bag was placed over his head. 

Rey looked around. In the front of the crowd, she picked up two or three others, like her, in cuffs. Her heart started beating faster. 

“They’re not going to....!?“

“Don’t look,” muttered Finn.

“He’s right. You shouldn’t,” said a deep clear voice.

Rey looked around for where it came from. A tall man in a black robe was standing next to her. There was something about his face, though. Something familiar. Her breathing became labored.

He looked down at her, brow furrowed, a mirror image of hers.

His eyes were beautiful. Golden amber, with an interesting slant to them. He had dark hair and a scar that ran across his brow and cheekbone. He hadn’t the wind-chapped, sun-spotted skin of a lifetime among the sand. His skin was luminous. She wondered what it felt like.

She tore her eyes away, disturbed. She felt her attention pull toward the man like there was something life-or-death vital about him. She felt drunk, almost. It was fear. The whole crowd vibrated with it, stank of it. It was crushing her. She couldn’t breathe. 

Something, up the steps, caught the light of the low sun. Rey’s hands jerked up toward her neck as she felt a horrible phantom pain.

Simultaneously, a meaty _thunk_ , and screaming as something heavy — his head! — tumbled down the steps. Blood flowed down after it, first in a wet spurt and then slowly, she realized then: that glint had been an ax. Just a metal ax. Nothing to cauterize the wound.

Her breath hissed out of her open mouth. A few people screamed. Finn’s eyes were shut tight. The man in black watched. His lower lip twitched. Not-quite impassive.

“W-what did he do?” 

“Are you afraid you’re next?” he waited for a nasty little beat. “Don’t be. He challenged the Supreme Leader and lost. You’re safe.” 

He seemed very sure of it, but it was hardly reassuring. On the steps, troopers dragged away the body like it was trash. Others hosed the blood off. They didn’t even bother to move the head at the base of the stairs. It was so small. Its red and bloody stump and inches of bruised black skin showed. Rey felt her blood rising. Rage mixed with her horror. 

She would not assist these people in legitimizing their barbarism. Not for anything.

“This is monstrous…!”

“Shut up, you.” The stormtrooper nudged Rey as Finn hushed her.

The man in black seemed lost in thought. “I suppose it is. But there are… consequences to losing.” 

She looked him up and down. He knew a lot, but he seemed too accepting. “What’s the prize?”

Finn whispered, “I really don’t think we should be talking to strangers.”

The man ignored him. “The throne. Among other things. If someone wins, they get to rule the galaxy. Restore order.” he glanced down and found her unmoved. “Or end the First Order, if they chose to.”

Rey’s eyes darted toward the stormtroopers. She’d been warned against saying anything negative about the First Order anywhere on Naboo, not even if she thought she was alone. They must not have heard him.

She didn’t know what to make of this man. 

“How do you challenge him?” she asked. 

The man gestured. “That gong up there. Hit it and state your intentions.” 

Finn had worked with Rey, long hours in the sand.  They were not together. There had been some awkward fumbling, a kiss or two, some hands below the belt line. Nothing more than that. Their friendship was what it was. Close as Jakku allowed any two people pitted against one another for survival. Nobody’d sold anyone else to slavers for food, and they shared when it was low for three years, and that was pretty damn good.

So he knew her. He read Rey’s intentions on her face. He whispered, “Don’t—“

She broke free of her captors and bounded up the still slick steps, the stink of blood and worse her nostrils, stormtroopers on her heels. There was a mallet by the gong, but no time. She slammed into it, shoulder first. It clanged out, deep, loud and clear. The troopers slammed her body into it and yanked her away. 

“Don’t say it!” shouted Finn after her. 

“I challenge the Supreme Leader!” she shouted. The troopers hauled her to the block, kneeling. She winced as they knelt her in front of it. She panted. Finn, in the center of the crowd, struggled and cried out, but the troopers had him. Beside him, the tall man. He worked his hands into a pair of gloves and stepped forward. His hand rested on something metal on his hip. Two things, clipped side by side. Not a blaster, more cylindrical than that. He reached the steps. The troopers didn’t stop him.

The crowd fell away. It was like he and only he was there. They were in a dark void, falling. 

He stood over her. She struggled to stand, but couldn’t. Whatever was happening, her body was still pinned into kneeling. She shook with adrenaline. They had met somewhere before, somewhere far away. When she made up ghost stories to Finn in the howling dark, the sand blotting out the moons, he had been the specter she whispered about.

“ _You_ ,” she said.

“You. Who are you?” His voice rattled in her bones. She felt her mouth open to obey him, almost unthinkingly but shook it off. He reached his hand down toward her. 

“ _Who_ are you?”

This was stronger. It was like something pulling on her bones with pliers. Worse there was something warm, a subtle pleasure in the thought of obedience. She shuddered. Something in her moved as she did, and she felt whatever force was invading her pushed back. The man’s eyebrows raised.

“N-nobody,” she panted. “I’m nobody.”

She was resisting him. She grabbed ahold of that feeling, bore down on it, and pushed hard as she could to get this man out of her head and —

The barrier between his mind and hers gave. Knowledge flooded in. This was Luke Skywalker’s nephew and murderer. Resistance General Leia’s son and murderer. The murderer of Snoke, former Supreme Leader.

Underneath all that, buried below words, was something sweet and dark as treacle. A gnawing hunger like Rey used to feel alone in the dark before she could crawl into Finn's neighboring hovel to quiet it. She didn’t know anyone else who felt this loneliness like she was made for something, like she was meant to be doing something. Another human being had felt this, exactly this. It was unbearably moving to know — not speculate, not empathize, _know_ — she was not alone.

She pulled back, into her own head, panting. Her eyes focused on his face, sweating and wild-eyed.

Her enemy. This was her enemy.

Why was that confusing? Someone must have jabbed her with something one of the times she got tackled. She felt drugged.

“You are Kylo Ren. Supreme Leader.” Rey spat. From the fear on his face, she was right.

The world snapped back into place. The crowd. The smell of blood on the hot stone. Finn yelling from the crowd.

How did she know his name? Drugs could make her hallucinate. Might make her believe she knew something about him. But they couldn’t tell her Kylo Ren's name.

With a gesture, he ordered her uncuffed and released. She stood, rubbing her wrists. She eyed the crowd. A red guard, the praetorian guard, lined the edge of the crowd, forming a solid wall between her and any escape. They lowered their red-edged halberds. Rey was penned in.

“W-what now?” she said.

Kylo Ren unclipped both cylinders from his belt and held them out. One was shiny, one black and crude. “Pick one,” he said.

“No.” Anything this man wanted from her, she wasn’t going to give it to him.

“Do you think I won't kill you if you're unarmed? Take one.”

They didn’t look like a weapon she’d ever seen. She pointed at the shinier one. He threw it at her. She caught it as he flipped a switch on his own weapon. It burst to life, a crude flaming bolt of light.

“You had better kill me, ‘Nobody,’ or I’ll make you wish you had.”

Before she could reply, he lunged at her. 


End file.
